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WOW Project, KDPI Give Students a Voice
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Tuesday, May 29, 2018
 

STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Holden Archie adjusted the headphones on his head and leaned into the big round microphone as he posed a question to the man sitting next to him.

“What is the most challenging part of being mayor of Hailey?” the Wood River Middle School student asked Fritz Haemmerle.

Across the table, Archie’s classmate Jocelyn Guzman repeated the question into a microphone in Spanish for unseen members of the audience listening to the KDPI radio broadcast while driving or at home folding laundry.

Eighty Wood River Middle school students have taken turns squeezing into KDPI’s new studio in the Christiania Building for the past several weeks as they’ve presented their Radio Flyers program the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month.

The program, done in collaboration with WOW: The Generosity Project, has aired at 4:30 p.m. on KDPI 88.5 FM, streaming online at kdpifm.org.

They kicked it off with three students from Samantha Archibald Mora’s Advanced Spanish class interviewing the founders of Nosotros United, a high school club that strives to bridge the gaps between cultures. They conducted another with Sun Valley’s newest Olympian—snowboarder Chase Josey. And they interviewed their school resource officer Brad Gelskey, along with a couple of the valley’s  city leaders.

“I was driving to school listening to the radio and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to do a show with the students?!’ ” recounted Mora. “I had no idea what I doing. We started off learning about public announcements. Then the students listened to Ellie Newman as she interviewed people on the radio. They picked people to interview, then they practiced with each other.”

KDPI host Ellie Newman taught the students the technical skills they needed to conduct a radio show, including that of picking and playing music of their choice during interview breaks.

It was an amazing thing for them to put on headphones and speak into the mic and know it was going out over the airwaves,” said Newman. “The first couple times they were so nervous they’d giggle as soon as they turned the mic off. But, as it went on, they gained confidence and they learned to think in terms of the audience they were speaking to.”

In response to questions, Haemmerle told Archie how he had been argumentative as a kid, prompting his father to say ‘That Fritz, he’s going to be mayor one day.”

As he grew older he decided he needed to step up and do things, rather than complain about the way things were. It’s challenging being mayor of a small town, like Hailey he added.

“You run into people all the time at the grocery store who tell you what you’re doing good and bad,” he said. “And one of the challenges is keeping Hailey  a livable town rather than a place for second homeowners. Some of the discussions about the skatepark became very animated between parents and others. But, hopefully, you reach a compromise over such discussions.”

Haemmerle talked about the Snake River Water adjudication process, prompting Jocelyn Guzman and Alison Hidalgo to grimace as they tried to figure out how to translate the word “ajudication.”

“The hardest part of translating is when they say big words,” Guzman said later. “I totally skipped that one altogether!”

Haemmerle smiled as Archie asked him his views on the current presidential administration.

“That’s the most fun question I’ve been asked!” he said.

Haemmerle went on to say he disagreed with President Trump most over civility, or lack of civility.

“Our leaders are supposed to be civil in everything they do. They’re not supposed to polarize the country. And I find President Trump to be very polarizing…I would rather see someone who’s a statesman, be it like President Kennedy or President Reagan. Leaders  should create a civilized atmosphere in what I think should be the most civilized country in the world. And right now I don’t think President Trump is doing that.”

Haemmerle said he enjoyed the interview as he took off his headphones.

“I like working with kids better than anyone else. I really like their questions,” he said.

Archie, a mountain biker and Nordic skier, said he picked Haemmerle because he thought he would be interesting to interview.

“And I thought it would be a way to understand what he’s trying to do,” he added. “It was a little stressful being in the hot seat, but it was fun.”

As Haemmerle slid out of the hot seat, Elizabeth Herrick slid in, talking to Clayton Ellsbree about how the WOW del Projecto de Generosidad gives all students in Blaine County $25 every school year to be applied towards a local nonprofit in hopes of teaching them philanthropy.

Before she left, Herrick presented KDPI Radio with a check for $2,000 in honor of its work with the students.

“The WOW Project shows students not only have a voice in school but a voice in the community,” said Herrick as she described how the initiative funded by small group of investors has given out a quarter million dollars over six years. “And generosity is one way of doing that.”

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